Washington ? The mission of making the nation more secure requires many more diverse agencies working together than ever before — everything from border agents to firefighters and public health officials to nuclear weapons scientists.

“We have stitched together money to create programs that are broader than what any single agency could do,” said Wayne Shotts, director of Livermore’s center for homeland security.

One line of defense already in place is a Livermore-designed system monitoring the air in 30 U.S. cities for a biological attack, but the system is slow to provide warning and requires workers to collect filters each day. At a Livermore lab, John Dzenitis, a chemical engineer, is working on a better approach: a machine about the size of a compact refrigerator that can detect airborne pathogens automatically.

“We can run it for a week at a time, and it reports once every hour, 24 hours a day,” he said.

In another lab, Robert Dunlop, program leader for prevention of nuclear proliferation, is working on better ways to find possible nuclear weapons inside shipping containers. “This is not as simple as you might expect,” he said.